Fool-headed, Full-hearted
January 3, 2009

I begin the new year with a misstep. Not a mistake and not a regret, but something that has left me in tears all the same. I'm not the sort of girl to give in so easily to temptation, to let anger cloud judgement and lead the whole of my heart and body into action. It's a dangerous combination to be out of, and a position in which we both swore we'd never find ourselves. How quickly the emotions can turn you from innocence to concupiscence, and how we can forget to resist. It comes back to me in flashes --his mouth on the inside of my thighs, his hands softly parting my legs. My heart racing in his ear, his eager voice in mine.

The "I love yous" that were whispered, the clumsy stroke of his hands beneath my clothes. His fingers moving in circles on my back, my breathing growing heavier, his all-too-tolerable attitude toward my need to talk, this intricate yearning as we found ourselves in the lengthiness, alone. His lips making trails down my body, first my mouth, my cheek, my shoudlers, on the center of my breast, and my own lips hungry on the side of his neck. My desire to be closer, his need for honesty, our probing questions and even more curious fingers. So ensconced in this, as aware as I was of the rising and falling of both of our chests, the excitement that hung through the entire room, his body holding itself directly above mine, or my legs straddling his hips, I remain dettached from the core of the emotions. Perhaps because if I accept them, then I accept the fear of what we have created, that the desire lingers, that the temptation has not removed itself. The thought that we stopped just short of fulfillment can't be a comfort because the intention to go further was there.

Does this change us --that we can no longer look at each other through the pure, safe veil of friendship? That our eyes can no longer focus through the clean scope of good intentions? Are our hearts dirtied by the footprints of desire. And again, where is the guilt? If I can recognize this as wrong, look into myself and see a difference in the usual course of my actions, how is it that I've managed to escape the heaviest of all emotions?

He means something me --something more than my feeble heart could predict or protect itself from. And so, in his absence, I'm left with a dull ache for him, a shadowy reminder of the desire I felt in that bed, in that hotel room. The residual passion, the scorching memories, they heap themselves upon a lonely woman, burn themselves into an already scarred heart. And I wonder if, in the instance of a reunion, we would (or could) be stronger. Are we still capable of togetherness without temptation?

The softness of the first kiss, our shaking hands drawn one to another, the naif of simply laying and being in front of the television, beyond distractions. It could have remained there, our friendship caught just on the edge of what was right. We could have stayed on that ledge all day, still inside our own wonder. To peer off that precipice, the view should have been frightening. Yet, the fear was absent, and we fell. There was no hesitation in the way I went to him, as if my body was predetermined to find his. And he was so concerned, so patient, so gentle in the instance. He asked permission, and I couldn't help but smile. Despite my cautions, I loved him even more afterwards. The length of his arms, the way his head towered over mine as we stood together, the tameness of his words, and the awkwardness with which he asked if I was okay. Timid, yet still eloquent.

The need to say his name a thousand times remains. One I can't write here. To touch him the most idle of ways. This goes beyond the simplicity of a crush or the immediate satisfaction of lust. And I'm afraid for that to go unrealized. I'm not sure I can express it as clearly as I felt it, if there are words for how I moved inside when he held me. Perhaps this is the reason for the fall: that I felt no worry for myself, that I was unable to hold any reservations about him. We had reached our hands towards something unbreakable and felt them meet in the middle. And there we are, still --stuck in the middle --without answers, without certainty, but full of love.

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